Resilience and Reforms in Ukraine at Wartime: The Role of Local Self-Governance

Summary and Recommendations of the 20th Annual Kyiv Dialogue Conference
Berlin, 18-19 November 2025

 

Ukraine’s recovery is inseparable from European security. Experience from the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome and the Kyiv Dialogue conferences confirms that resilience is built locally through local self-government, civil society engagement, and accountable governance. These reforms are essential both for Ukraine’s EU path and for Europe’s own security.

The 20th Annual Kyiv Dialogue Conference, which brought together more than 200 experts from Ukraine, Germany, Poland, and the wider EU, stressed the need to scale best practices nationally and share them across the EU, especially as member states face mounting security threats from Russia. The core message for Europe was clear: Ukraine’s model of community-based resilience, empowered local authorities, and transparent governance offers valuable insights for strengthening democratic resilience and societal cohesion across the EU. By strengthening local capacities, fostering civil society engagement, and maintaining accountability in public spending, European countries can reinforce their own security and societal resilience in the face of external pressures. The 20^th Annual Conference of Kyiv Dialogue thus advanced Ukraine’s recovery agenda while offering timely contributions to the broader European security debate.

1. Decentralized Recovery and Security

“Decentralization made communities strong, resilient, and united, enabling municipalities to respond rapidly to wartime challenges.” (Tetiana Arsenyuk, Deputy Director of the Association of Amalgamated Communities)

Decentralization has enabled municipalities to respond rapidly to wartime challenges, sustain essential services, support defence efforts, and respond rapidly to citizens’ needs. However, concerns are rising about political interference in local governance, limited participation of local self-governance in national decision-making, unclear rules for public investment (PIM), fragmented planning, and inconsistent legislation. Communities often lack sufficient technical expertise to access the Ukraine Facility and other recovery funds. Military administrations established in areas without active security risks duplicate local government functions and weaken democratic governance. The number of military administrations should be reviewed and removed were unnecessary.

Recovery must therefore remain locally led, with municipalities empowered to plan, implement, and oversee reconstruction. Ukraine must reaffirm the principle of subsidiarity, ensuring decisions remain close to citizens and local communities with sufficient technical capacity. As MEP Michael Gahler emphasized, decentralization succeeds only when local authorities have real powers and adequate funding.

Protecting local self-governance and strengthening planning and investment instruments at the local level are essential for effective, EU-aligned reconstruction.

2. Good Governance, Integrity, and Civic Participation – Pillars of Democratic Resilience

Recent corruption scandals risk undermining public trust and donor confidence, making integrity systems and the protection of local self-government central to recovery.

Integrity systems must be strengthened through transparent procurement, robust internal controls, and open public data at all levels of government even under wartime conditions. The introduction of community charters by 2027 should further guarantee citizen participation, local oversight, and include local authorities and civil society in all recovery decision-making processes to strengthen accountability and transparency, and address specific needs of frontline and occupied territories.

Civil society and independent media, who play an indispensable role, need systematic support, particularly in frontline regions, to ensure oversight.

3. Human-Centred and Inclusive Recovery

Sustainable recovery depends on inclusion, rights protection, and access to essential services to strengthen social cohesion, national unity, and long-term peace. Many vulnerable groups such as national minorities, displaced persons, persons with disabilities, women, frontline communities, and people from temporarily occupied territories, remain underrepresented in recovery planning.

Instead, their needs must inform reconstruction and peace efforts. Population in occupied territories require simplified procedures to relocate, restore documents and property, and access services.

Moreover, Ukraine’s recovery also depends on a strong social care system, which is a pillar of national resilience and defence readiness. Social services are overloaded and underfinanced, despite increasing wartime needs. Palliative care is severely underdeveloped, and unpaid care work, primarily done by women, drives inequality and burnout. With millions of current and future veterans needing long-term support, communities lack sufficient capacity, though promising models like Veteran Case Managers and Veteran Hubs are emerging. Additionally, civil society remains crucial in filling gaps and requires continuous support.

Core elements of human security must be protected even under attack. This includes rapid information systems, functional shelters, and guaranteed access to water, electricity, medical care, public transport, and childcare. Decentralized energy projects like the Nizhyn – Germany cooperation show how investment in local expertise, innovation, and transparent governance can reinforce resilience when paired with coordinated European support.

4. Strengthen EU-Ukraine Cooperation and Defence Readiness

Russia’s ongoing attacks on energy systems and civilian infrastructure demonstrate that reconstruction efforts cannot succeed without robust defence capabilities and civilian protection. Europe and Ukraine need an integrated approach combining reconstruction with defence readiness and long-term security cooperation.

Expanding military cooperation between Ukraine and EU member states is essential for scaling production, ensuring interoperability, and strengthening both Ukraine’s and Europe’s strategic autonomy. Ukraine’s frontline experience and rapid innovation, especially in attack and interceptor drones, electronic warfare, and adaptive defence technologies, position it as a strategic security partner for the EU.

This includes joint research and development, knowledge transfer, and capacity building of Ukrainian and European experts and military personnel, testing and validating advanced systems, and integrate emerging technologies into operational use.

An integrated Europe-Ukraine security framework supported by long-range strike capabilities, air defence coalitions, and industrial cooperation with Poland, France, the Baltics, and others is essential for protecting and enabling sustainable recovery efforts.

5. Recommendations

The Ukrainian Government should

1. Reaffirm and protect decentralization. Ensure municipalities’ stable legal, fiscal, and administrative autonomy, with safeguards against political interference.
2. Empower local governments to lead reconstruction with clear powers, financial autonomy, including preserving personal income tax revenues and reviewing the necessity of military administrations.
3. Strengthen local capacity to implement public investment (PIM) and recovery projects efficiently through systematic training and staffing support.
4. Improve planning and coordination. Improve coordination between broader strategic planning to reduce fragmentation and establish clear guidelines for project selection, implementation, and reporting.
5. Reinforce anti-corruption systems. Enhance integrity systems across all levels of government and ensure civil society and local media oversight.
6. Align with EU governance standards in public administration, rule of law, and decentralization.
7. Prioritize decentralized renewable energy. Introduce incentives, simplify licensing, introduce market tariffs, and integrate community-level energy planning into national recovery strategies.
8. Ensure inclusion of minorities and affected populations in all recovery frameworks and ensuring protection for minorities, displaced persons, persons with disabilities, women, frontline communities, and residents of temporarily occupied territories.
9. Create a National Care and Resilience Reform Program to integrate social care, palliative care, veteran support, and gender-responsive services.
10. Establish the National Minorities Rights Protection Centre as foreseen by legislation.

 

Ukraine’s International Partners should

1. Support long-term municipal resilience. Provide long-term support to municipalities by empowering local decision-making, allocating resources, and building capacity. Ensure Ukraine Facility and other funding mechanisms remain transparent, accessible, and aligned with EU standards to enable effective, decentralized recovery.
2. Increase investment in local resilience. Fund decentralized energy systems, critical social infrastructure, and community-based human-security projects through grants and long-term loans.
3. Promote participatory and inclusive recovery processes, ensuring that local communities, youth groups, vulnerable populations, and displaced people are systematically included in local decision-making on reconstruction and public investments.
4. Strengthen sustainability of independent media. Establish emergency media-support funds, especially for regional outlets and frontline journalists to strengthen sustainability and resilience and ensure information integrity and democratic oversight.
5. Expand support to civil society. International partners should scale up support to Ukrainian civil society through flexible, multi-year funding and by enabling participation in EU–Ukraine joint programmes, cross-border projects, and partnerships with European NGOs, think tanks, and municipalities.
6. Ensure systematic inclusion of civil society in recovery and reform processes, from planning and consultation to monitoring and evaluation, in line with EU standards of participatory governance.
7. Embed the perspectives of displaced people and communities from temporarily occupied territories into the negotiation process and peace agenda to ensure they are meaningfully represented in consultations, dialogue processes, transitional justice design, and reintegration planning.
8. Enhance security and defence cooperation by supporting research, innovation, and security. joint defence technology development, strengthen industrial-military partnerships with Ukraine, addressing gaps in air defence and civilian protection, and promoting knowledge-sharing on Ukraine’s defence systems

 

Kyiv Dialogue

Kyiv Dialogue is a non-partisan and independent platform for deepening and consolidating the dialogue between Ukraine and Germany. Set up in 2005, Kyiv Dialogue brings together opinion-forming multipliers from politics, the media, and civil society in both countries. Since 2014, Kyiv Dialogue began supporting civil society initiatives and local municipalities in the Ukrainian regions to strengthen local democratic structures. Since 2014, Kyiv Dialogue has been working with more than 40 local communities across 15 Ukrainian regions. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the focus has shifted to social resilience, recovery, and security policy – including military support for Ukraine and Western sanctions policy. Kyiv Dialogue is a program of the European Exchange gGmbH.

The 20th Annual Conference of Kyiv Dialogue was hosted by the European Exchange and the Heinrich Böll Foundation and is supported by the International Renaissance Foundation (IRF), the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Foundation for German-Polish Cooperation, the German Platform for the Reconstruction of Ukraine, the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ), the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), the Bertelsmann Stiftung, and the German Association for East European Studies (DGO).

This policy paper was developed with the support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.